Some businesses generate profit by charging customers for the ability to use output devices owned by the business. For example, such output devices may include copy machines, printers, fax machines, or multifunction output devices. Such businesses need a reliable way to keep track of each customer's use of the output devices belonging to the business. Typical output devices, however, do not include reliable reporting mechanisms that track each customer's usage independently.
Existing solutions for tracking customer usage of output devices used by such businesses generally represent a trade-off. For example, manning each output device with a staff member produces reliable tracking of each customer's use of each output device, but is slow, inefficient, expensive, and can result in customer privacy issues. On the other hand, customer self-reporting is typically faster and allows the customer privacy, but hinges on an assumption that customers will be honest and not make mistakes, and accordingly holds no guarantee of reliable tracking of output device usage. Both of these solutions also take a hit in terms of reliability from the likelihood of simple human error, either on the part of the customer or on the part of the staff member.